This invention relates in general to spray nozzles and in particular to spray nozzles which use a venturi effect to mix two fluids.
Spray nozzles are widely used for spraying various commodities, including such things as paint, cleaning agents and solutions, and water. Many prior art spray nozzles force a fluid such as air through a converging/diverging venturi configuration. A low pressure region is formed at the location of the minimum diameter of the venturi, which according to the well-known Bernoulli theorem, corresponds to the maximum velocity of the fluid. Coupled to the spray nozzle at or near the low pressure region of the venturi is a liquid inlet passage through which a liquid is drawn into the fluid stream.
One example of a prior art spray nozzle is embodied in U.S. Pat. No. 3,770,209 to Wilcox, which is incorporated herein by reference. The liquid inlet passage is coupled with an expanding portion of the nozzle that is located downstream from the diverging portion of the venturi, rather than that portion of the venturi which has fluid at the maximum velocity. Further, the performance of a spray nozzle may be improved by controlling design parameters such as the ratio of the width of the receiving passage to the width of the air inlet passage, to be in the range of 1.6 and 2.5 along with the ratio of the distance between the downstream edge of the opening of the liquid inlet passage and the width of the receiving passage to be less than approximately 2.0.
Heretofore, there has been a need for a spray nozzle with design parameters allowing increased rates of speed of the nozzle, where the speed of the nozzle is defined by the amount of time it takes to evacuate a quart jar attached to the liquid inlet passage, with minimal regard to the flow rate of air in cubic feet per minute ("CFM") being used. The present invention satisfies this need in a novel and unobvious way.